


Sherlock meta

by dogandmonkeyshow



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Family Secrets, Gen, Meta, Sherlock Holmes and Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-03-21 03:35:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3675891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogandmonkeyshow/pseuds/dogandmonkeyshow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various random meta-ish thoughts. Each chapter will be on a specific topic, most of which pop into my head as I'm working on the sequels to <i>Fall</i>, though none of them are specific to that story line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sherlock and relationships

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: I'm not a uber-analyst, have never studied critical theory or textual picking-apartiveness, or anything like that. These are just (mostly brief) thoughts on specific aspects of the show or characters peppered with the occasional thought about what we might see in season four, based on those thoughts of what we've seen so far.

One of the things that has always struck me about the show, and which doesn't seem to get a lot of air time in fandom, is Sherlock's emotional development through the seasons. At least, his emotional development in a broader sense, as opposed to the “evolution” of his relationship with John, which is only part of the story.

I've always been struck by the clear stages of Sherlock's emotional development through the show. What I saw in the first season was that Sherlock seemed to be at the maturity level of about an eleven-year old (“rampaging id monster” was how I described him once to a fandom friend). At that age, boys haven't yet developed the ability to see the other bipedal talking things around them (what we call “people”) as having any real connection to themselves, in the sense of being aware that others have the same wants, needs, desires as them. They're just coming into the ability to identify and acknowledge to some degree that they themselves have needs beyond the instinctual ones. Children that age are just beginning to develop self awareness and empathy, to think of others as having some sort of value beyond what they provide (in a material sense) to the child. The Sherlock we see at the beginning of Season 1 is very much that pre-empathetic child. A highly intelligent one, partly functional in the world, locked in the body of an adult. John's arrival, of course, is the trigger for Sherlock's emotional development. I imagine it as John opening the gate to Sherlock's emotional garden, and tempting him out of the closed world he's inhabited since he was a child. 

Season 2 brings us Irene, and another boot-strapping of one aspect of Sherlock's emotional development: a growing awareness of sex, or at least of sex in relation to himself. We find out from Magnussen's mind palace entry in Season 3 that Sherlock has developed some degree of sexual activity by then; I've wondered more than once about when that started: before or after Irene. We're never going to get an answer, but I think there's a correlation there if not, perhaps, causation. Sherlock and Mycroft's extremely petty (and so typically fraternal) mutual bitchiness at the palace is revealing. Like many siblings, the sticks they use to beat each other with are the things that each “possesses” but the other lacks. For Mycroft, his sexual experience and Sherlock's lack are the thing he taunts him with. I think this says a lot, for who other than Mycroft is going to know that about Sherlock?

By Season 3 we've seen Sherlock develop into emotional early adolescence, and all that entails, especially in regards to sexuality and himself. Which brings me to Sherlock and relationships. We see Sherlock reaching out to Molly, and at least expressing (perhaps sincerely, perhaps for form's sake only) happiness that she's found someone to share her life with. He seems to be genuinely happy for John, though mostly because he's finally found a girlfriend that Sherlock approves of. He even discusses the notion of relationships with Mycroft, who I can't imagine has ever encouraged that kind of conversation between the two of them. Sherlock is collecting data about relationships, because Sherlock's first instinct in any situation is to seek out as much data as he can get to feed the “computer”. He's thinking about relationships in relation to himself. He's even willing to pretend to be in one in order to further a goal. 

I suspect that if the Magnussen case had happened in Season 1, Sherlock would have been finding some other way to break into CAM Tower other than pretending to be in a romantic relationship (though, of course, this is in response to ACD canon as well, though the connection between ACD and the scripts is very fluid). Janine fulfills two purposes for Sherlock, he's killing two birds with one stone; she is both a means to an end in regards to Magnussen and as a sort of “trial run” at having a relationship with someone. He likes her enough to be willing to pretend, to consider her data to be of an adequate quality. In one way it isn't a “real” relationship, because he's using her, both to further his attack on Magnussen and as a data source for the “learning how to have relationships with people” project going on in the back of his mind since John's arrival on the scene. But on the other, it's as “real” a “romantic” relationship as he's capable of having at that time. It's like an early adolescent, pre-sexual romance, that transitional phase between the entirely non-romantic friendships of childhood and the increasingly sexual relationships of middle to later adolescence. 

I think one of the things we might see in Season 4 is Sherlock in a sexual relationship, or at least trying to head in that direction. Will they bring Janine back for this? I hope so. She's a wonderful character, perfectly cast. And the chemistry between the two actors is _fabulous_.


	2. The Holmes family

First off, I have to say I love what Mofftiss did with the Holmes parents. They're ordinary. They're slightly posh-ish middle class, but nothing special. They're not urban sophisticates. And they're pretty much what I expected based on what we see of Sherlock and Mycroft's characters in the first two seasons. I never, ever bought the fanon version of the country estate and servants and the dead father/dysfunctional family/abusive parents, blah blah blah cliches that were pretty much the norm in fandom until TEH was broadcast. For one thing, aristocratic families don't produce sons like Sherlock and Mycroft; they produce boring, conventional people concerned about maintaining the family's place in society because the family's place in society is usually the only thing they have going for them. And no abusive household produces children with the astonishing levels of self-confidence possessed by the Holmes brothers. It was obvious from the beginning that they were indulged to a considerable degree and Sherlock, in particular, coddled at lot.

So, onwards.

Mummy is supposedly a genius. Not surprising; I've always suspected that children inherit their intelligence from their mothers and their talents from their fathers. Mummy also appears to wear the trousers in the household. Father sits back and probably likes to think of himself as the parent who took care of the boys' emotional needs, but appears to have failed that mission pretty spectacularly.

Sherlock is Mummy's favourite, probably because he's the child who's more like her: demanding, bossy, quixotic, likes to be the centre of attention, doesn't care much what other people think (er, that last might just be a little of my head-canon slipping in there, in regards to Mrs Holmes). 

Most mothers would love to have a son like Mycroft: successful financially and in his career, responsible, ambitious, hard-working. But he doesn't seem to get a lot of respect around the old homestead, which implies that responsibility and ambition weren't much valued in the Holmes household when they were growing up. Perhaps Mycroft had to become the “adult” of the household in some ways, early on. Hard to say. 

But the family dynamic is off-kilter in depressingly ordinary ways: Sherlock and Mummy definitely acting as a partnership within the family; father off in the corner, unwilling to rock any boats, probably intimidated by both of his sons, but especially Mycroft, who I can't see as having been an affectionate child even before Sherlock was born. Mycroft, the only child for seven years, serious and dutiful and a bit boring, self-contained and intense, shunted aside when the very late baby arrived. He was accustomed to having all his parents' attention for a long time before he lost it and almost forty years later still resents the loss. He doesn't understand why Sherlock gets all the praise—after all, Mycroft is the hard-working, responsible one and Sherlock is a perpetually failing drug addict who won't even consider contributing anything tangible to the world (in Mycroft's eyes).

I've always thought that one of the factors that underpins the hostility between Sherlock and Mycroft is that Mycroft didn't allow himself to be locked into an emotional childhood. He developed his own adult life, and Sherlock felt abandoned by Mycroft's probably fairly assertive rejection of the locked-in perpetual childhood that Sherlock appears to have lived in until John showed up. He wanted to share this perpetual childhood with Mycroft, his only peer, and when Mycroft insisted on growing up, Sherlock felt left behind. Mycroft became responsible. Mycroft wanted Sherlock to join him, but on his terms, and Sherlock doesn't appear to have ever had to learn how to accommodate other people terms, so rejected his brother outright.

Bur this doesn't explain the vitriol that Sherlock regularly poured on his brother throughout the first two seasons. There's something else there other than a low-grade persistent disappointment. I think something did happen, and (in my head, anyway) it has something to do with their parents. I don't buy the idea that Sherlock is uncomfortable with Mycroft's sexuality (either the existence of it or his orientation; like many folks in fandom, I think Mycroft is most likely homosexual, to the extent that he has a sexuality, anyway). To Sherlock, sex is an irrelevancy and so that isn't going to be the source of the spite we see.

So, what's the great “secret” behind the animosity? We really have to veer off onto the rough tracks of head canon, here. 

I can imagine, based on what I see as the dynamic between the parents, that at some point in the past Mr Holmes may have strayed. Found someone who valued him a bit more than his brilliant wife did, and who was more sympathetic to his needs than his precocious and terrifying sons. And he was found out, of course; the perils of cheating on a genius wife and having two fantastically observant children. One of whom (Mycroft) forgave him, and the other didn't. Sherlock would, in any dispute between the parents, take their mother's side. If Mycroft forgave their father for straying, I can't see Sherlock ever forgiving him for this subsequent “betrayal” of their mother. Would this be enough? Perhaps. Combined with professional jealousies, Mycroft's insisting on trying to keep Sherlock away from drugs, and Sherlock's persistent refusal to just grow up already, building on top of their already very differing characters, Mycroft's resentment and Sherlock's sense of entitlement... yeah, I can see this being enough to elicit the constant sniping and attempts at one-upmanship. But what saves them is the fact that underneath it all they actually love each other. Well, Mycroft loves his little brother and will do an awful lot to try to protect him. Sherlock... well, Sherlock isn't there yet. He needs to do some more growing up, I think, before he can acknowledge even to himself that he cares about his brother. But I think he'll get there in the end.


	3. Mr and Mrs Holmes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fun "fact" about Sherlock and Mycroft's parents.

Okay, fun "fact" about the Holmes parents: in my head, their names are Tom and Margaret.

Firstly, it's because I hate the name Sigur. And it's a stupid name. Not that Sherlock and Mycroft aren't stupid names. But I hate it, so I refuse to contemplate thinking of Mr Holmes as _Sigur._

Tom. Yeah, Tom fits. It's solid and ordinary and a common name for men of his generation.

And Mrs Holmes, who is often called Violet in fandom for some reason, really does seem like a Margaret. A bit reaching middle class, but not posh, which she most definitely is not. And Violet seems so prissy, which again she is not, so I just don't see her a a Violet, because shrinking and Mrs Holmes are hardly compatible, are they?

And secondly, it's because Mr and Mrs Holmes remind me so much of a friend's parents that the moment I saw them on screen, the thought "OMG they're exactly like A's parents" flashed through my brain. I mean, they even look like them. And the personalities are bang on Mr and Mrs C: Mr C the quiet, kind, stand in the corner type, tall and dignified; Mrs C the bossy whirlwind, short and stout and never shy with an opinion.

So it's canon for me: Tom and Margaret Holmes. YMMV.


	4. Whither Irene?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What has she been doing since Sherlock's entirely unrealistic and unbelievable-to-the-point-of-bonkerness rescue of her three (?) years ago. Where is she hiding? What is she doing? Have she and Sherlock been in contact? And has she relieved him of that pesky virginity yet?

When I sat down to begin writing _Sherlock_ fic, one of the things I promised myself I would never do was think about or write Irene Adler. Not that I dislike the character exactly, but Moffat killed her for me. He took what could have been an interesting character and made her just another Sherlock fangirl, in the process excising her agency and turning her sexuality into nothing more than a point of male fetishization to be discarded when no longer needed for titillation purposes, to serve his boring, cliche nerd fantasy of having all the girls fall in love with him. Er, the hero, I mean.

A year later... and I'm sitting here having to think about Irene. About the nature of her relationship with Sherlock in the year 2015. 

I could, of course, ignore her existence. But sometimes a story takes you in unexpected directions, and if you're trying to be faithful to the character that M&G have created as well as follow the logic of the situations that you've put him in, sometimes you end up writing scenarios you didn't expect at the beginning of the project. 

So instead of tossing about 15,000 words of story, or destroying the logic of the case that forms the backbone of the fic, I'm swallowing my pique and turning my attention to Irene and what she's been doing since Sherlock's entirely unrealistic and unbelievable-to-the-point-of-bonkerness rescue of her three (?) years ago. Where is she hiding? What is she doing? Have she and Sherlock been in contact? And has she relieved him of that pesky virginity yet?

So. Where is she hiding? What is she doing?

I came up with India. Mumbai, the business capital of the country, specifically, for a lot of reasons. Firstly, because the Americans are after her, she needs to hide in a country that's not a traditional ally of the US, a place where consequently the CIA isn't going to have as much freedom of operation as it would in the territory of a long-time ally. This rules out Japan (my first idea) and pretty much all of Europe, Canada, any country seen as overtly friendly/kow-towing to the US. Secondly, she was escaping from Pakistan. India, the traditional enemy and right next door, seems an obvious place for her to land. I briefly considered South Africa, but she's going to want to base herself in a country where she can re-establish her business, which means lots of men with lots of money and lots of time to indulge themselves. And the flash new mega-millionaires of Mumbai struck me as just what she'd be looking for. The India connection through Many Happy Returns wasn't critical to my decision, but it allowed me a little plot twist that eased a logistical difficulty I was having trouble navigating around.

So, Irene is in Mumbai, tying up and beating on new money-billionaires and Bollywood producers. Having the time of her life, I imagine, superstar of a new _demi-monde_.

Have Irene and Sherlock been in contact?

I imagine that when Sherlock was in India during the hiatus, he would have been in contact with her, even though New Delhi is a long ways from Mumbai. In my mind, when he was there, he and Irene created a communication link that they could use once Sherlock was back in London, if they needed to get in contact with each other. Sort of an electronic dead drop, that Sherlock would try to keep secret from MI-6, with the recognition he likely wouldn't be able to keep it secret from Mycroft, especially once one of them had used it.

Sherlock, in my mind, still doesn't really have much of a grip on what he thinks about Irene. Probably because she exists outside the algorithms he uses to order and characterise people in his head. She elicits emotions he's unfamiliar with and still doesn't have the ability to entirely process. He's fascinated by her because she's one of the few people he's met who's like him. But at the same time she's entirely unlike him. In the more far-flung, speculating corners of my mind, he thinks of her as how he might have turned out if he hadn't been raised by Mycroft: wild, unfettered by any kind of convention, free to do exactly as he pleased, free to use his intelligence more overtly as a weapon. He's completely wrong, of course, but I don't think he's learned that lesson yet.

And the pesky virginity?

In my head canon, Sherlock's cherry is still very much intact as of the end of S3. And is likely to remain so for quite some time. When he decides he doesn't want it any more, I don't think it'll be Irene he turns to, either. Because as fascinating as he thinks she is, she repels him a little, too (though much less than his protestations, which were as much for Mycroft's benefit as anything else). They're too much alike, both too selfish, too self-absorbed to be able to make any significant connection, even for a momentary roll in the hay. I think of it as an intellectual love affair, the mutual admiration of well-matched combatants who rarely find sparring partners at their level. Their relationship is defined by the sparring, not the coming together. So no. No nookies for these two. At least not with each other. And that's without even addressing the “I'm a lesbian but desperately in love with a man” hand-wavy bullshit that Moffat seems to think is so amusing, but which makes me want to kick him in the balls.


	5. Mycroft and power

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sherlock_ provides us with little more than vague hints and allusions about what exactly Mycroft does in the British government. Here are some thoughts on his work, where his authority comes from, and how he got to his current position.

One of the more commonly accepted tropes in BBC Sherlock fandom, it seems to me, is the idea that Mycroft Holmes has almost unlimited power. That he is the closest thing on Earth to the Christian god that's likely to appear in fiction: omnipresent, omniscient, and most importantly, omni-powerful. That he can fix anything, arrange anything, mould the world to accord with his wishes. That the only person in the world who dares oppose him is his brother. After all, there are Magnussen's words: “To the people who understand these things, Mycroft Holmes is the most powerful man in Britain. After me.”

So, now that Sherlock has disposed of the odious Magnussen, does that mean that Mycroft is now the most powerful man in Britain? Perhaps. Does this mean he can do as he wishes, unfettered by the messy realities of governance, politics, and the systems that he has exploited to scramble his way to the top of the heap? No.

Why? 

Let's start at the beginning. 

What do we know about Mycroft Holmes? Starting with Doyle canon, he's presented as some sort of calculating machine. What in modern governmental parlance we refer to as an _analyst_. In _Sherlock_ there are vague allusions to something related to Intelligence work, with hints linking him to both MI5 and MI6, or perhaps even above/outside both those agencies. I think this is clever of the writers; giving us little detail means they're not placing restrictions on themselves as to what they can do with the character in the future. So let's assume Mycroft's work on the show is similar to what is alluded to in Doyle. What does an analyst do? In modern government, an analyst is someone whose job, ultimately, is to give advice, which is based on analysis of data, on a particular area. The subject can be broad-based (“how do we reduce poverty in Britain?”) to very specific (“What will be the domestic security consequences of involvement in this particular Intelligence operation?”).

In a democracy like Britain, the people in government (politicians and their political staff) propose and pass legislation and regulations, make decisions, and are responsible for programs that (supposedly) fall under the mandate accorded to them by the electorate by voting them into government. The bureaucrats do the heavy lifting: policy development and analysis, program development and delivery, and oversight. Analysts play an important role in this process at all levels of government, because they take raw data from a wide variety of sources and turn it into information, usually in the form of briefings. Analysts work at all levels of government; I imagine even the Royal Household has them, though they'd probably have some silly medieval name.

The power that an analyst has is directly proportional to the magnitude of the issues they address, and the value placed on the advice they provide by those same legislators and senior bureaucrats (the people who run Ministries and large programs). The power an analyst has is partly informal; in the back corridors of power, the soft, informal power an analyst might possess can have nothing to do with their formal job title, especially at the higher levels of power. 

We have no evidence, from Doyle or _Sherlock_ that Mycroft has any formal or hard power at all. He commands no armies, he does not head a department, he is not part of the government itself as he is not an MP or a member of the Lords. Officially, he really does just have “a minor position in the British government”. Of course, his influence is stupendously greater than that of a minor civil servant. Trust me, as a minor civil servant, I would _love_ to have the ability to summon Special Forces units from my mother's kitchen when my brother ruins Christmas dinner. Again.

So Mycroft is an analyst—one accorded access to considerable resources due to the value accorded his analysis and advice by the front-of-house players in governance: Cabinet ministers, heads of departments, and other people who _officially_ hold all the power. 

But why? Because these people's ability to keep their jobs—jobs that come with extraordinary privileges and access to very high earning potential once leaving government or Whitehall—depend on receiving and following the best advice. It keeps them out of trouble; it keeps them from making jackasses of themselves; for MPs it helps them get re-elected; it keeps them from having to resign in disgrace.

I can see Mycroft, clever fellow that he is, leveraging the soft power that flows out of that regard, into a position of extraordinary unofficial power. After all, if a Cabinet Minister were to ignore Mycroft's advice, present legislation Mycroft had advised against, or in some other way dismissed his work, I can imagine Mycroft becoming suddenly unavailable to that Minister in the future.

Mycroft's job is fixer and negotiator, as much as advisor. And when the political stakes are very high, being seen as a power broker of this kind accords a lot of unofficial privileges, including unquestioned access to the resources he needs to keep an eye on his crazy little brother. That kind of respect and deference, from people who themselves wield tremendous power and are themselves the recipients of respect and deference, is worth _way_ more than a job title or a place on an organisation chart.

The flip side of this coin, however, is that unofficial power of this nature is the easiest to lose. When one's power is based on reputation, anything that diminishes that reputation, even by association, has an impact on the respect and deference accorded to you by those with the hard power: the people who control departmental budgets, the people with the job titles, the people interviewed on the evening news. 

Bureaucracy—especially bureaucracy in a parliamentary system that is not founded on a written Constitution—is a strange, wayward beast, difficult to pin down and understand. People often mistakenly think of power and authority in a bureaucracy as being structured like a pyramid: the man (and even today it pretty much is still always a man) at the top has the most power and he can boss around anyone below him; that he has more power than anyone on the levels below him. This might be the case in small groups, especially where the man at the top has extraordinary powers of coercion. 

This model is too simple for discussing bureaucracies. Here, power is structured like a matrix. It's a network of relationships. Hard power is simple and executed in a manner that is often linear, but the larger the group the greater a role soft power plays in group dynamics, and soft power is almost always built on relationships. Relationships in this context are like investments, some yield big dividends for a short period of time, some are slow growers. And Mycroft is the canniest investor there is: he can recognise a future leader at fifty paces, and within five minutes of meeting them know exactly what he needs to give them now in order to have them think he's invaluable to them. He knows how to ingratiate himself to people, and then later when they're dependent on him, when to use the whip to keep them in line. And for most of these people, the real goldfish, they never understand that in the end they work for him, not the other way around.

But his position isn't impenetrable, his power isn't impervious to inroads from rivals. And he absolutely _must_ have rivals; no one gets anywhere near the kind of power Mycroft has without kicking a lot of heads on the way to the top. There will most definitely be people who want Mycroft's power, who think they can do his job, possibly even thinking they can do it as well as he can. A certain amount of his energies will be spent in identifying potential rivals and trying to neutralise them before they become a threat, and thwarting the efforts of the more persistent/talented/effective rivals for his job, who will use any slip-up or mistake as a means of trying to topple him. Mycroft has never worked in a vacuum, like a cartoon hermit meditating on a snowy mountaintop. Things that happen even in the periphery of his life affect his work, because they affect his reputation. And because so much of Mycroft's authority is based on reputation, Sherlock's actions in particular are going to affect Mycroft's authority. I can't imagine Sherlock's murdering Magnussen would have no impact on Mycroft and his work. The Bond Air incident—regardless of Sherlock eventually deducing how to access the data on Irene's phone—would have done both brothers' reputations no good at all (process is almost as important as result in bureaucracies).

There's a part of me that hopes the little hints we've had in the show so far about how Sherlock is connected to Mycroft's work are further explored/developed in S4. For this would give us more Mycroft (always a good thing). As much as anything, I'd love to find out if any of my thoughts on his working world end up being correct!


End file.
